2008 was another good year for fundraising with the sum of £2,601 handed over to The Children's Foundation (Charity No. 1000013) in respect of The Pennine Challenge. Thanks to the team who accompanied me on a 44 mile bike ride and 22 mile run through the harsh terrain of the North Pennines, this took the overall total raised since I began fundraising to over £51,000. Brilliant!
2008 was also the year in which I started training for the 3100 mile run across the USA in 2011. More importantly though, 2008 was the year where the real building blocks started to be put in place to give me the best possible chance of succeeding in the USA. And what exactly do I mean by success?
Success will obviously be managing to finish the run in 1 piece in the 100 days that I've planned to do it in. The next campaign will also be considered a success if I manage to raise a considerable amount of money for St Benedict's Hospice (Charity No 1019410) and The Children's Foundation (Charity No. 1000013).
The fundraising target is a very ambitious £50,000. At the time of writing there is £1395 worth of pledges on the board. That's not bad at all given that the run is still over 2 years away! I'd like to think that by the end of 2009 that figure will have nudged close to £5000. To help me achieve this I'll be continuing to sell Run Geordie Run t-shirts, selling the places in the "3000 scheme" as well as asking for conventional pledges. Also, thanks to Geordie band "The Exiles", there'll be a couple of charity songs for sale/download too. I saw the 2nd draft of lyrics back in October for the 2 songs. Both songs were superb to say the least! I can't wait to hear what they sound like when put to music.
The t-shirts are selling very well indeed with all proceeds going to the 2 charities. This wouldn't have been possible without the help of Brian Wells (design), customplanet.co.uk (production), Peter McCowie (production costs) and David Fairlamb (erm......well David twisted a few arms).
The first few places in the "3000 scheme" have been taken up too. It is my hope that I'll be able to dedicate each mile of the run to a lost loved one. Please click the link at the right hand side of the page for further details.
As you can probably tell, I'm getting a "little help from my friends" with the organisation and support of this run. I'll talk more about that in part 2 as well as the plans for 2009.
